


Frutti Di Mare

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Breathplay, Choking, Drug Use, F/M, Flogging, Gen, Humiliation, M/M, Masochism, Voyeurism, generally disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:06:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Punishment!  Reward.  Punishment!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frutti Di Mare

**Author's Note:**

> Take the warnings seriously, Dear Reader. The quote in the summary comes from the song by the Birthday Party, Mutiny In Heaven. I am not associated with the production of Gotham, and this school is not associated with the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Being in trouble with adults is the worst. Oswald frowns. He is an adult. His twenty-fifth birthday is like a half-remembered joke: only the punchline remains. His eighteenth birthday is a whisper from another room. There's nothing like getting caught to diminish him, to make him feel like he's been cast back to childhood. He remembers his mother's livid silences. It wasn't enough for her to stop speaking to him; she wouldn't watch TV or play the radio when she was angry, and he didn't dare make a sound. As her ire poured forth and stained the passage of time, the silence seemed to contract evermore, until it was wrapped around Oswald like another skin, and the ticking of the clock in the living room and his heartbeat were one. Counting out endless seconds that he didn't want, but were shoved on him, all the same.  
“Go in,” is all that the man who comes out of Maroni's office says to him. It's one of his mother's moods all over again- extending to the furniture, or as good as: the living objects Maroni surrounds himself with. When the man's back is turned, Oswald makes a face at him.  
Maroni's sitting at his great desk of dark wood. It looks like a coffin. He clasps his hands on its surface, regards Oswald with a sneer. “Did you come here to kiss the ring?”  
“You aren't wearing any rings,” Oswald says, “I could kiss your hand, though, if you wanted me to.”  
It's the sort of response that usually makes Maroni laugh, but he doesn't, now.  
“It's an expression. It means to prostrate yourself in reverence or obedience before someone who has power over you.”  
“Oh,” Oswald frowns again, “I guess I am.”  
“I told you, Penguin, all is forgiven,” he waves a hand, “Just don't do it again.” He looks down, begins going about his business.  
“I need you to trust me again,” Oswald blurts out, “like you did.”  
“You want things to be the way they were?”  
“Yes.”  
Maroni looks up. “Then, you need to learn to take what's given to you, and not be so fucking greedy.”  
“Yes.”  
“That includes taking 'no' for an answer.”  
Oswald looks at him, expectantly.  
“That means, if I tell you you're forgiven, you accept it, and you don't try to worm your way back into my good graces with some big show of contrition.”  
“Oh.”  
“You really want me to forgive you?”  
“With all of my heart.” His heart, which is ticking like the clock in the living room, in the center of one of an endless number of afternoons like stained pages in a stale book.  
“Then, you're going to work for me.”  
“I do work for you.”  
“I mean, you're going to work for it. You're going to do whatever I tell you.”  
“Yes.”  
“So, get out.”  
His mouth opens, closes; he goes through the necessary clockwork movements, and turns.  
“Wait. Come back.”  
Grimacing, Oswald reverses the process, turns around.  
“Come here.”  
Oswald takes a few steps forward.  
“All the way,” Maroni shows his teeth, “I'm not going to hurt you.”  
Oswald walks all the way up to the edge of the desk. Maroni stands.  
“If I asked you to get down on your knees, we'd be here all day. But do your best,” he holds out his hand, palm down, “You can kiss it.”  
Wincing, Oswald manages a shallow curtsy as he inclines his head, and presses his lips briefly to the knuckle of Maroni's middle finger.

The next day, when he shows up to work at the restaurant, the same man from yesterday strides over, shakes his head, and says, “No. The boss says you're washing dishes.”  
“What?” Oswald sputters.  
“Did I stutter? So, take off that fancy suit,” he slaps the backs of his fingers against Oswald's lapel, “and get in uniform.”  
“How long?” Oswald gapes.  
“As long as the boss says.”  
At this time of day, the kitchen is infernal. The flames of the ranges and broilers are those of Tartarus. The spray of the hot water from the sinks is that which comes off of the Styx. The cold of the walk-in is the ice that will end the world. It's only been a few hours, and his entire body hurts. His head is ponderous, swimming with the heat. His eyes sting, water, and sting some more. His neck is an over-wound spring. His shoulders and arms feel lacerated from the inside. His back hurts so much that he's no longer consciously aware of it; it floats around after him, like a whispered rumor of pain. His hips feel like they've been hit with mallets. His left leg is clenched with the pain of effort. His right leg spasms, and threatens to go out several times. With each step he takes, he thinks of the story of the Little Mermaid- the original, which his mother called 'Die kleine Meerjungfrau', clapping her hands together delightedly when she told him that as the mermaid walked, it was like treading broken glass underfoot.  
In the late afternoon, he's standing outside, in back of the restaurant, smoking a cigarette with the rest of the dishwashers and busboys, when his tormentor pokes his head out of the door.  
“Back to work,” he barks.  
The rest of them start grumbling, and the man says, “Quietos. Solo el,” pointing at Oswald. He ducks back into the building, slamming the door.  
“Pendejo,” Oswald spits.

After a respectable period- more than a week, less than two- the same man leads him once more to Maroni's office.  
“Wait,” he says, a hand up to Oswald's front, and goes in. A moment later, he comes out, tells Oswald: “In.”  
“And how are you, today?” Oswald sneers brightly, but gets no answer.  
Today, Maroni is smiling. “How's the kitchen treating you.”  
“It's fine.”  
Maroni laughs. “Tell the truth.”  
“It's terrible. My hands are a mess,” he holds them up, showing the numerous bandaids ringing his fingers, “In the mornings, I can barely walk. Yesterday, I dropped a stack of plates, and my supervisor hit me with a dishtowel.”  
“You're lucky I don't make you pay for those.”  
“If you want me to, I will,” Oswald replies flatly. The pain is making him feel a peculiar kind of indifference. If the pain is a fact, and it is, then it's the biggest fact, and all other facts must bow before it. It's so big and so strong, that Oswald is beginning to feel like it owns his body, and he's just renting space.  
“Don't be bitter, Penguin. You're getting a promotion.”  
“To what?”  
“'To what'? Come on, smile.”  
The corners of his mouth twitch.  
“There you go. You're a waiter, now. It'll be easy, because you'll only have to wait on me. You're going to be staying with me for a while.”  
“In your house?”  
“That's where I live.”  
“But my mother-”  
Maroni waves his hand. “Mothers are very understanding. Tell her it's to further your career. She wants you to be successful, doesn't she?”  
“How long?”  
Maroni's smile evanescences. “As long as I want.”  
A driver takes him home, and waits downstairs as Oswald packs his bags.  
“My boss needs a new personal assistant, and he asked me to fill in until he can hire someone.” The story comes to him at the last minute, and he's crushingly proud of it.  
Still, his mother folds her arms over her chest. “Is he married?”  
It occurs to Oswald that he doesn't know. He says so.  
“So, there could be all kinds of women, there, at all hours.”  
Oswald rolls his eyes. “I'm going there to work, not to socialize. Please, Mom, this is an important opportunity for me.”  
“Why doesn't he just give you the job, then?”  
“I'm too valuable at the restaurant.”  
“So, you'll be working two jobs?”  
“For a while, yeah, I guess.”  
She shakes her head. “It's too much. How can they feel good about taking you away from me?”  
Most people in the twilight of twenty-five aren't tethered to their mothers. But he can't say that. “They don't know how important you are to me.”  
“You should tell them,” she pouts, and he puts his arms around her.  
“It's only for a little while.”  
“How long?”  
“He didn't say.”  
“You call me,” she scolds, then straightens his jacket, “Off you go. Don't keep important people waiting; they don't like it.”  
The driver makes him put his own bags in the trunk. It takes him several minutes of wet, huffing struggle; each second, hating the driver more. And hating his mother for not simply accepting what life is, always trying to make it bend to her will, at Oswald's expense. And hating that man at the restaurant, who keeps ordering him around with such obvious satisfaction. And hating those goddamn fishermen for not just doing as they were told. And hating himself, for getting caught.  
He throws himself into the car with a loud exhalation, wiping his face with a handkerchief.  
“Took you long enough,” the driver mutters.  
“I don't have much experience as a beast of burden. You're more suited to it, I'm sure.”  
The driver mutters something else, and Oswald smiles. After the effort comes relief, a slow sweetening of his nerves. Now that the pain is becoming smaller and less frequent, he can feel other things.  
He bites his lip. Does he hate Maroni, though? He hadn't considered it as a possibility. Like everyone else, Maroni is disposable, but strangely, Oswald can't imagine actually disposing of him. Not like the driver, or the man at the restaurant. Them, he can't wait to dispose of. He knows exactly how he'll do it. He spends the ride to Maroni's house sharpening knives in his mind, sharpening the gradual spread of the warm feeling this produces- and everything else is forgotten.

Maroni hits him on the knuckles with a teaspoon.  
Oswald yelps.  
“You serve from the left, clear from the right.”  
“Ow.”  
“That didn't hurt.”  
Oswald raises his knuckle to his mouth, and Maroni says, “Not at the table.”  
Oswald drops his hand.  
“I guess you didn't go to Catholic school,” Maroni chuckles.  
“No.”  
“Where I went, if you complained, you just got hit again.” Then, he does hit Oswald again, on the other hand, not quite as hard.  
Oswald starts, but keeps his mouth shut, swallows the sound that wants to emerge. Strangely, it makes the pain both more acute, and smaller. The stab of a pin instead of a punch to the gut. It sizzles through him, then fades out, endorphins chasing the sparks.  
“There. That wasn't so hard,” Maroni says gently.  
More warmth, from a place within. “No,” Oswald replies in a small voice.  
“I'll bet you don't know a fish fork from a salad fork,” Maroni tuts, shaking out his morning paper.  
“No.”  
He shakes his head. “And you, working in a restaurant.”  
“You'll have to teach me.” Oswald's not sure whether or not he's being sarcastic.  
“I should,” Maroni muses.  
Oswald's sure that he doesn't really mean it, or that he's going to forget, but some time later, Oswald finds himself in front of a mass of dishes and silverware. Maroni holds up a fork. “What's this?”  
“A fork?”  
Maroni rolls his eyes. “The hell, you say. What kind of fork?”  
“A small fork?”  
Maroni brings down the points on the back of Oswald's hand. To his credit, Oswald manages to suck in the cry about to blow out of his mouth. He rubs the points of red on his skin. It hurts far less than having the the pin of the brooch driven through his flesh, but it's just as much of a shock.  
“It's a fish fork.”  
“Oh.”  
“Form follows function. See how delicate it is?”  
“Why do you know all of this?” Oswald asks, holding his wounded hand.  
“You never know when something's going to be important. It's better to know a lot of useless information than to be missing that one crucial piece. You can understand that, right?”  
Yes, Oswald can understand. He surveys the place setting. It's like those memory games he used to play when he was a kid. He liked those. Lying on his bed, when he was well enough to stay awake, but not yet well enough to go to school. Though, he was never really well enough for school; nobody believed him when he said so.  
“Good,” says Maroni, “Good. You're learning.” Oswald waits to be petted or jostled in that way that Maroni sometimes does; waits for the touch of a hand that stays remote. Feels the absence of touch like a touch, in its own way.  
Then, he's dismissed, and he walks slowly back to the room where he's been sleeping. His breaths are short, fluttering out of him like trapped birds. His head feels strange- he thinks again of being sick as a child, the glass sea of fever. Is he getting sick? He hopes not. If he gets sick, he's sure that he'll be sent home.

Maroni's having a party.  
“Why? Is it your birthday?”  
“No. Because I can. You make your own occasions, in life.”  
“Oh.”  
Oswald's attendance is required. The longer he stays in Maroni's house, the less he wants to see other people. He hasn't been to the restaurant in a week. He hasn't been out on any jobs in days. People must think that he's dead. When he imagines it, he doesn't really mind: it's already happened once, after all. It is like being dead, being away from the world, inside of this house, which is silent, but without the quality of his mother's anger. When he leaves for good, will it be like emerging from a tomb?  
“I got you a new suit,” says Maroni.  
“Oh, really?” Oswald can feel the blood ascending his throat.  
When he sees it, Oswald feels the blood recede again. “It's navy.”  
“You wear too much black,” Maroni says cheerfully.  
“I like black.”  
“Well, now you can learn to like navy.”  
But Oswald doubts that will ever happen.  
He puts it on. It fits perfectly, even better than his own clothes. When did Maroni get his measurements? The whole thing is overwhelming; too much, in a way that Oswald can't place- too much of something. He examines his reflection in the mirror. He almost looks like a real person. Of course, his hair is more ridiculous than ever, and when he turns his head to the side, the severity of his nose is jarring. He smiles, the expression hollow. Have his teeth always looked like that? Has his skin always looked like this? Have the circles under his eyes always been this dark? He takes a couple of steps back, to see himself from a distance. His walk is comical, now. Usually, there's some style, a weight to it. Now, he just looks like a drunk accountant trying for laughs.  
“I'm not going,” he spits, crosses his arms over his chest. He says the same, more gently to Maroni.  
“Why not?”  
“I look like an asshole,” he whines. He doesn't even care that he sounds like that.  
“You're not there to look good.”  
“Why am I here?”  
“To learn a lesson.”  
“In what?”  
Maroni shrugs. “I haven't decided yet. It's up to you whether or not you come. You wanted to earn back my trust, didn't you?”  
“What does this,” he points at the suit, “have to do with trust?”  
“Nothing, probably. Maybe I'm just punishing you until I'm not pissed off anymore. Maybe that's when I'll want to trust you again.”  
“Couldn't you just stab me with a fork again?”  
“That'd be easy, wouldn't it?”  
“Yeah.”  
“If you want, I'll hurt you some more. Is that what you want?”  
Is there a right answer? Does he care anymore, if there is? What if he became just another interchangeable piece of Maroni's operation, slotting in with the ones already in place? Started wearing plain shirts, and a leather jacket, like all of the other men who work for him? Embraced the simplicity of a life spent doling out violence to those who Maroni decided deserved it? Never decided, himself. Never thought about much of anything. Never spoke. Embraced silence. Maybe doing things the difficult way doesn't always get you what you want, but it gets you somewhere. Doing things the easy way never gets you anywhere.  
“I want whatever you want,” Oswald murmurs.  
“Good. Let's go to a party.”

“This is Dorothea.” She holds out her hand, the fingers pinched together as though she were picking up something unpleasant. Oswald takes the bunch of her fingers, moves it gently up and down. Next to Dorothea, Maroni makes the same disgusted face Oswald's seen so often.  
“Oh,” Oswald says, “Is this your-” mistress, but he can't say that, “sister?”  
“Oh, you,” she says and laughs, too drunk to know that she isn't actually being flattered.  
“Dorothea,” Maroni says, too mildly, “This is Penguin.”  
“Why do they call you that?”  
Frowning, Oswald huffs out a breath through his nose.  
“Do your walk,” Maroni says.  
“It's not 'my walk'. It's just the way I walk.”  
“Well, do it.”  
Huffing again, Oswald turns around, walks a few feet, and then walks back, toward them. Dorothea laughs so hard that her head falls back. “That is hilarious!” she gasps, “How did you come up with that?”  
“I had my knee broken in three places. I couldn't afford to go to the hospital, so I had to let it heal on its own. Obviously, I couldn't re-set it, myself, so the bones didn't knit properly. I'm going to be deformed for life.”  
“Oh,” she squeaks.

“Dorothea wants to dance with you.”  
“I don't know how to dance.”  
“Well, then, I'll teach you. Take my hand.”  
Looking down, Oswald does.  
“You put your hand on her waist,” Maroni places his hand on Oswald's waist, pulls him in closer so quickly that Oswald gasps, “and she puts her hand on your shoulder,” Maroni gives him a meaningful look. He sets his hand on Maroni's shoulder. “Then, you just sort of lead her around the dance floor. Nothing fancy.” He moves Oswald here and there. “It's easy.”  
“Yeah, but you know what you're doing,” Oswald mutters, “I'd rather dance with you.”  
Maroni laughs, and Oswald feels it.  
“This isn't that kind of party, Penguin,” he says, and hands him off to Dorothea. Then, he tells the band to play something fast.

The pain is a wall. It just hasn't been built yet. It's a pile of bricks, and they're piled on top of Oswald. He's been trying to rise from this chair for the past five minutes; each time he lifts himself, he feels the muscles in his legs turn to water.  
“Are you all right?” Maroni finally asks.  
“I'm fine.”  
“Don't lie to me.”  
“I don't know if I can move.”  
Maroni pulls him up, makes him walk, but lets Oswald lean on him, guides his steps. In Oswald's room, he drops him down onto his bed. “I'll run you a hot bath,” he says.  
“Your party.”  
“Anyone left is either getting thrown out by security, or thrown into a cab, if they're too drunk to move.”  
Oswald says nothing else. He lies back, and listens to the full roar of the water running. He's falling asleep when it stops. Maroni comes back into the room.  
“Take off your clothes.”  
“What?”  
“You're not taking a bath with your clothes on. You hate that suit, so take it off.”  
“Turn around,” Oswald mutters.  
“Like you have anything I haven't seen before.” Maroni rolls his eyes, but turns around.  
Oswald leaves on his underwear; he expects a comment, but gets none.  
“Can you stand?”  
“I think so.” He gets vertical, but that's the extent of what he can do on his own.  
“Are you coming down with something? You're clammy as fuck.”  
“Oh, I just sweat a lot. I didn't know dancing was so physical. Other people make it look easy.”  
“Did Dorothea step on your toes?”  
“Yes,” Oswald says with a giggle of relief.  
“You might be a penguin, but she's an albatross. Are you okay here, or do you need me to stay?”  
“Could you stay?”  
“Need help reaching those difficult areas?”  
Oswald blinks. “No. I just don't know if I'll be able to get out of the bathtub once I get in.”  
Maroni turns around again, and Oswald wriggles out of his underwear and lowers himself into the bath. It's almost too hot, and he exhales a tremulous breath, his skin singing with the heat, and his muscles softening in release. Clenching his eyes shut, he leans back, lets the porcelain take his weight. After a moment, he slips down, stays underwater until he can't hold his breath any longer, then emerges, inhaling deeply and rubbing his eyes. He looks over, and Maroni's sitting on the toilet with the lid down, smoking a cigar.  
“You're really in a lot of pain, aren't you?”  
“Quite a lot, yes.”  
“Was that true, about having your knee broken?”  
“Yes.” Oswald sucks his lower lip.  
“Why?”  
“'Why', what?”  
“Why did they do it?”  
Oswald regards the ceiling. “Strangely enough, it was because I went too far, and got caught.”  
“You regret it?”  
“Going too far, or getting caught?”  
“Getting caught.”  
Oswald frowns, sinks into the water up to his chin, sits up again. “Why wouldn't I?”  
“Sometimes, people do things knowing they'll be caught. They do them in order to get caught.”  
Oswald shakes his head. “I'm not like that.”  
“Like what?”  
“I don't want to be punished.”  
“Then, why are you here?”  
“Here, in this bathroom?”  
“Here, in my house. You know that I could kill you,” Maroni shrugs, “It didn't even occur to you, did it?”  
Oswald says nothing.  
“It should have been your first thought. I take you away from your house, your mother, have my driver take you out to the woods or something, and lights out.”  
“I don't think you'd do that.”  
“Why wouldn't I?” The cigar is forgotten in a soap dish; Maroni's turned toward him, sitting up straight, looking down at him.  
“You wouldn't have me anymore,” Oswald says, without thinking. What does that mean? He clears his throat. “All of the men around you are like furniture. They all look the same; they talk the same; they think the same. When they think. None of them would dare oppose you.”  
“And then, there's you. How far would you take it?”  
Oswald shakes his head. “If I told you, it wouldn't be exciting anymore.”  
Maroni laughs. “Do you think this is a game?”  
“Everything is, in one way or another.”  
Oswald doesn't have time to register what's happening: Maroni's on him, leaning over him, pushing him up, his hand around Oswald's neck, pressing Oswald's head into the corner of tiled wall above the bathtub. His fingers dig in, not yet constricting Oswald's windpipe, but pressing on it. What Oswald notices most keenly is the sudden cold on his skin, and the sound of the bathwater kissing the porcelain as it stills around him.  
“Is this a game?” Maroni asks, too quietly.  
Oswald shakes his head.  
Maroni lets go, and Oswald slips down the wall, all the way down into the water. He lifts his head out, moves his hair out of his eyes. “I didn't mean any disrespect.”  
Maroni regards him skeptically.  
“Really, I didn't. I just- I don't think before I speak, sometimes. I didn't mean to imply that there's anything laughable about you, or your business.”  
“I almost believe you.”  
“Let me-” Oswald coughs, “Let me prove it to you. I can, if you'll let me.”  
Shaking his head, Maroni laughs. It's not a nice laugh. “You really think you're something, don't you?”  
Oswald blinks. “Well, yes.”  
Maroni raises his eyebrows. “You're certainly a piece of work. This actually explains a lot,” he says, gesturing with a finger below Oswald's line of sight, under the water. Then, he leaves the room.  
It takes a few seconds for Oswald to realize what Maroni was talking about. He feels the flush climb his throat and face like steam. He slips lower into the water. He sighs. This is why he prefers bubble baths.

For three days, he's left alone. It's like holding his breath, and he doesn't know when the air is coming. Alternately, he's terrified and exhilarated. What if he's been forgotten? What if Maroni died, and no one knows Oswald's here, in this house? Will he just stay here, where it's comfortable, and not go out again until he truly needs something? How long will that take? How will he find the world? What will it be?  
If Maroni were dead, the police would come. He'd be brought into the station again, and there'd be no one to demand his freedom, now. Or, he could hide. He's small; he can fit into a lot of places most people can't. He could hide until everyone left, and then live here forever. He'd be like a ghost. A living one. Not dead- just forgotten.  
After the second day, he stops talking to himself. It only occurs to him, then, to wonder where the staff are. Most of the day, he's in his room; maybe they've been instructed to avoid him. He doesn't dare go anywhere other than the kitchen, the dining room, his bedroom and bathroom. Maybe Maroni's exactly where he usually is, and it's just an accident that Oswald hasn't encountered him.  
He calls his mother, just to hear somebody else's voice, and to hear his own, too. He tells her that everything is fine. Yes, everything is fine. I'm working very hard, and everything is fine. I love you, too, Mom- everything is fine.  
What does he do for three days? In the daytime, he reads. He didn't know what to expect, so he brought a lot of books. It's like being a kid, and being sick again. The television was good background noise, like being constantly surrounded by chattering well-wishers, but sometimes, he just wanted to be quiet. Being quiet was like being alone, and when he read, he could make the story into whatever he wanted, just for him: there was the story he read, and the one he wrote, himself, in his head. It was like living two lives.  
At night, he lies in bed. He takes a long, hot bath, stays in until he begins to drowse or the water cools too much for his liking, and then he dries off, gets into his pajamas, and lies there, in the dark. What does he think of? He doesn't. It's liberating, to not have to think. Whatever Maroni said about his intentions, Oswald knows that he's safe. The only thing he has to do, now, he's sure, is to wait. Maroni will decide that he's proven whatever he meant to, or gotten the desired result, and then, he'll come back, and then, Oswald will have to think again. For now, he's enjoying the rest.  
And that's exactly what happens. Up close, in the moment, people are chaotic, but at a distance, over time, you become aware of patterns, find that they're comfortingly predictable. The phone in Oswald's room rings.  
“Be in the dining room in ten minutes with my breakfast.”  
“Who is this?” His voice sounds like a tin horn.  
“Who do you think it is?”  
“Oh.”  
“Ten minutes.”  
He's not even dressed. It takes longer than he thought, so ten minutes later finds him running into the kitchen, his tie still stuffed in his jacket pocket, a button jumped on his vest. He takes the tray he finds there into the dining room.  
“You're late,” says Maroni, his voice shocking Oswald back into life.  
“I'm sorry.”  
“I know you're sorry. But you're still late.”  
Oswald sets down the tray.  
“If this is cold, you're going to live to regret it.”  
Without the possibility of death, Oswald's curious as to what Maroni might actually do to him. “How is it?” he asks.  
“Fine.”  
Oswald frowns.  
After breakfast, Maroni retires to his study, taking Oswald with him. As he follows Maroni, he can feel his heart in his throat and his wrists.  
“Close the door.”  
Oswald does. “What would you like me to do.”  
“I'm not sure yet,” Maroni says absently. He begins looking through files, reading papers. He makes phone calls. He writes letters. Oswald stands in the corner like a pedestal. He doesn't speak- somehow, he knows that will make it worse. Remaining silent is almost painful, but it's a peculiar kind of pain; more like that of sickness than that of injury: it isn't going anywhere, so it can only be endured, not assuaged. He falls into a kind of trance, the pain in his leg creeping up his body, his eyes losing focus. At noon, he brings Maroni his lunch; half an hour later, he takes away the dishes. Late in the afternoon, Maroni looks up from his work, says in a neutral tone, “Put on something nice. We're going out for dinner.”  
That's when Oswald remembers that he hasn't eaten all day. Now that he's aware of it, he finds that he's famished. It's a terrible feeling, edged in a weird kind of sorrow. It reminds him of when he was a kid, and sometimes, there was just nothing to eat. He didn't question it; he thought it was just something that happened. As he got older, it seemed to happen less and less, and they were able to live in progressively nicer places, and he never questioned that, either. Even with an adult's knowledge, it remains a mystery to him.  
In revenge for the hateful navy suit, which is still bothering him, even though it seems like a relic of some unfathomable past, just half a week later, he puts on his favorite things. The black fabric of his suit holds the suggestion of plum, and his vest is the color of old blood. He regards himself in the mirror with a flush of relief. For a moment, he holds his breath, feels the adrenaline sugar his blood, and breathes out audibly. He smiles.  
They go to the restaurant for dinner. The fixtures all look at him, wondering, he's sure, where he's been, and being gone for so long, how he managed to come back. Oswald isn't sure, himself.  
Maroni orders for him, some dish Oswald's never heard of.  
“You'll like it,” Maroni assures him, with a smile.  
Oswald smiles back, because he doesn't know what else to do or say.  
Maroni ordered a drink for him, too. When it comes, Oswald lets out a little hoot of surprise. It doesn't look very inviting. He holds it up to the light. Maroni touches his glass to Oswald's.  
“To your health,” Maroni says brightly, and finishes his drink in two sips. Oswald brings the glass up to his lips, and winces at the fumes coming off of it. He sticks out his tongue, and catches a drop. Involuntarily, he frowns, long and harsh. He makes himself take a sip. His lips sting, and his mouth burns, all the way down his throat. His entire head feels ignited, crackling and raw. Nausea swims behind his ribs. He puts his hand up to his breastbone. Maroni is watching him, so he breathes in deeply, and swallows the rest, shutting his eyes and making a fist with his hand in his lap.  
“It's very good,” he croaks.  
Maroni laughs. “You don't drink a lot, do you?”  
Oswald shakes his head.  
“You'll get used to it.”  
“I don't want to.”  
“You will.”  
The alcohol begins to effect him almost immediately. The fire in his head mellows to a desert wind, making his hot head sway from side to side. The pain that is always present is pushed to the side, so that he's only slightly aware of it. He feels soft, on the inside, free of worry or care, gentle and tender. Maroni orders another drink for both of them.  
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Oswald laughs.  
“Maybe.”  
“So you can take advantage of me? You don't have to get me drunk to do that. You can do whatever you want.”  
When the food comes, Oswald gasps. “What is it?” he asks in a stage whisper.  
“It's squab.”  
He makes a face. “Is that really a pigeon?”  
“Just try it,” Maroni says.  
Oswald does. If it has any kind of taste in particular, it's lost on him, on his swaddled brain and his muddled tongue. It's easy to just stick his fork in his mouth, chew, swallow. There's wine, and he keeps drinking it until Maroni moves away his glass.  
“That's enough for you.”  
“Do you think I'm going to embarrass you?” he asks, again in a stage whisper.  
“I just know that you don't have to be drunk to let your mouth run away with you.”  
Oswald doesn't have a come-back for that, so he just frowns. He doesn't say anything else until after dessert, when he's given another drink, as a reward for shutting up, he supposes. By then, it's late, and the restaurant has cleared out a bit, so Oswald starts when he sees the woman glide in. He has to have birds on the brain, because the first thing he thinks is: A swan! She's tall and slim, long-legged, with a long and graceful neck, and refined features. She comes to the table, kisses Maroni on the cheek, and sits down. In that moment, it's like Oswald has become invisible. No one says anything to or about him, and he just sits there, holding his empty glass. Then, the other woman comes over, just as lovely as her friend, and that's when Maroni says, “Oswald, this is Victoria and this is Nicole.”  
“Nice to meet you,” Oswald mutters.  
Then, what seems like just a second later, Maroni tells him that they're going.  
“Oh. Bye,” he says to the women. They look at each other.  
“No,” Maroni says gently, “We're all going together.”  
Then, Oswald becomes invisible again, because no one speaks to him or even seems to notice him at all on the ride home. Maroni and the women are drinking, talking, laughing together, and Oswald begins to fall asleep. When they get back to the house, he awakes with a start. He's walking in, trailing behind Maroni and his friends, not even sulking, just exhausted, when the driver grabs him by the arm, and says in sotto voce: “This is for the ladies.” He hands Oswald a small envelope. Oswald pushes aside the flap for a peek.  
“Don't open it, asshole. Just give it to them. Christ.” The driver shakes his head.  
He finds Maroni and the women waiting for him upstairs.  
“You ladies go powder your noses,” Maroni says, “I'll make us some drinks. Oswald will give you anything you need.”  
When Maroni's left, gone... someplace, Oswald gives the envelope to Victoria?- Nicole? “This is for you?”  
“Thanks,” the woman says blandly, and the two of them link arms, and go off... someplace else. Oswald stands there for a moment, and then starts off down the hall, opening doors until he finds Maroni in- his bedroom, Oswald supposes. A bedroom.  
“Did you take care of the ladies?”  
“I gave them their drugs, if that's what you're asking.”  
“Don't be like that. Have a drink.”  
“I don't think I should-” he begins, but Maroni's already handing him a glass. “Is there anything else you need me to do?”  
“Relax, Penguin. No one's going to hurt you.”  
The women come in. “Is your friend going to join us?” one of them asks.  
Maroni waves his hand. “He's just going to watch. Is that all right with you, ladies?”  
“Sure,” says one.  
“Whatever,” says the other.  
What is happening?  
Obviously, Oswald knows what's happening. He's seen people have sex before. In high school, a guy from the neighborhood used to pay him to be a look-out, because he was small and good at hiding, and could create a diversion if he had to. Until he insulted Oswald in some way Oswald no longer remembers, and Oswald told the police about his fifteen-year-old girlfriend and got him sent away for six months. He came out of jail swearing that he was going to kill Oswald, but by then, he and his mother had moved, and Gotham is such a large place, and Oswald is such a small person.  
Back then, Oswald used to look at the guy and his girls more than look out for anyone who might see, always with the vague idea that he should be feeling something. There was the thrill at doing something risky, and the thrill of watching people who didn't know that he was watching them, but other than that- Each time there was a new girl, Oswald thought that she'd be the right one, that she was his type. He knew people had types, that some men liked blondes, and some men liked women with large breasts- what he didn't understand then, but does now, is that it was a preference, not a deal-breaker. The girls came and went, but no matter what they looked like, none of them did much for him. Then, he began to get the dreadful impression that, perhaps, it wasn't girls, but boys he wanted to be looking at. So, he tried that, hid behind trashcans and up fire escapes behind gay bars, waited like a cop on a stake-out for trysting couples. It was the same old thing, though: it was fun seeing something he wasn't supposed to, but whatever the correct reaction was, it wasn't occurring.  
And now? The alcohol must be having a strange effect on him, because he feels- and this is the strangest thing: he thinks of being very young, in maybe, second grade, and being the smartest kid in the class. He knew he was, not just because his mother told him he was, but because of the way the teacher spoke to him. She was an older lady, with a kind way about her, and she saw him for the exceptional person he was. It wasn't pity. Even at that age, he knew how to tell the difference. He'd always been good with adults, but this was the first one who regarded him not as a novelty or an oddity, but as a person.  
Then, Brianna came to the class. And he wasn't the teacher's favorite anymore. It hurt. It hurt him in a way that he's felt only rarely, but it's a pain all its own, instantly recognizable. Deep down, in his chest- and, he supposes, this is heartache. He hated himself. Someone took something from him, and he couldn't prevent it; he couldn't even see it happening. Brianna was cute- chubby and freckled and golden- and from a wealthy family, and he might have been smarter, but she was just better.  
So, at recess, he took a pair of rounded-off scissors shaped like a pair of crayons, asked Brianna to play beauty parlor with him, and cut off her long blonde curls. Brianna didn't care- when she saw herself in the mirror, she squealed and laughed that she looked like Peter Pan- but her parents did. His mother was summoned, and she slapped his hand, snapped: “No- not with girls! Never pick on girls!” That was the first time he really got in trouble at school, and to think of it, even now, his stomach aches. Along with his heart.  
Something's been taken from him. Something he never even really had, because it's all just lies. Maroni is a means to an end. Just like everyone else. So, why does he feel- what?- bereft? What does he actually want, if not sex? What else is there?  
He bites his lip. He's thinking about the other night in the bathtub- and he still can't explain it to his own satisfaction. Maroni with the women is not like he is- was- with Oswald. He doesn't touch them the way he touched Oswald. There's no violence, not the same easy roughness, and it's all very civilized, but it seems so mechanical to Oswald. Just bodies shoved together until somebody succumbs to the inevitable.  
Only, it's not necessarily the inevitable, because the only thing that Oswald feels is that hot haze of pain behind his sternum. And he's thinking about the other night, and what he remembers, what makes him hurt all over, is the feeling of having someone so completely focused on him, feeling something that only he could make them feel- and Maroni feeling it so much that he was ready to kill Oswald. Maroni holds Oswald's life in his hands, but it's Oswald who's doing this. They're only there, both of them, because Oswald made it so. That's what he wants, Oswald thinks, as he touches the place where Fish rammed home the point of the brooch's pin.  
This isn't good. This is a problem. A certain amount of provocation is good strategy, but he can't lose his head. He needs to be good. Or he's never going to get anywhere. He's going to be here, fixed to this spot, and fixed to a point more than twenty years ago, forever and ever. Getting what you want means making sacrifices. Can he sacrifice this?  
Whatever this is.  
The woman riding Maroni goes through the theater of a spectacular orgasm, dismounts, and is replaced by the other. Oswald feels as though he should offer her a glass of water, but that's probably inappropriate. A few moments later, her fellow enacts the same performance, then Maroni finishes, and it's a relief, because it means Oswald can go to bed. He doesn't want to think anymore. He's sobering up, and all of his familiar pains are creeping back home, joined by what he imagines is the beginning of a hang-over.  
“What did you think of that?” one of the women asks Oswald, taps him under the chin with a finger.  
He gives her an expression of irritated boredom. “It was educational.”

He's free. He knows it, now. The next morning, Gabe comes to pick him up (“Boss' orders,” he shrugs), and life again is normal. That night, he returns to Maroni's house. He doesn't have to be told that he can go. Maybe he's expected to. And then, what? He can't leave it alone. He has to know. What, exactly, he's not sure. He goes to Maroni's study, but he's not there. Oswald finds him in his bedroom.  
“Come for your parting gift?” Maroni asks, raises an eyebrow.  
“What do you mean?”  
Maroni goes to Oswald; grabs his wrists, pulls them up, shakes him. He's thrown off-balance, but Maroni's holding him up; he's not going to fall. “This what you've been waiting for?”  
“I don't know,” Oswald whispers. The bones in his wrists are crushed together; he feels more than hears the 'click' of pressure. He's in danger, but he's also safe, because Maroni's holding him.  
“Tell me what you want.”  
“I don't know.”  
“What do you like?”  
“I like...” Oswald looks at the ceiling. He looks down. “Put your hand around my neck.”  
Maroni laughs. He lets go of Oswald's wrists- but slowly, so Oswald only shakes, doesn't tumble- undoes his tie, unbuttons his collar. His hands are soft, softer even than Oswald's, but far larger, and so much stronger. First, it's like a caress, a long, deep stroke into his flesh, and Oswald lets his head fall back. The increase in pressure is graceful in its suddenness, and Oswald gasps. He feels the beat on which his heart rate increases, and becomes more and more aware of his pulse until he can feel it everywhere. His fingertips tingle. Inside, he feels that softness again, but it isn't painful. Or, not in the same way. There's an ache, low in his belly, spreading downward, and he wants-  
He tips his head back further, and Maroni presses harder. Now, it properly hurts- full, hard pain- and he can hardly get any air at all. He hears himself panting- like a goddamn dog- but he doesn't care.  
“That's enough,” Maroni says softly, and lets go.  
Oswald sucks in a ragged breath, brings his hand up to his neck, rubs his fingers over the places where Maroni touched. He turns his head from side to side.  
“Please. Please do it again.”  
“I could kill you.”  
Oswald shakes his head.  
“I said 'no'. We're going to try something else.”  
“What?”  
“Take off your jacket.”  
Oswald does.  
“Come over here,” Maroni points to a chest of drawers.  
Oswald goes.  
“Lean on this,” Maroni says.  
Oswald puts his hands on the top, and braces himself against it.  
“Spread your legs.”  
Oswald tries, but he can't balance himself.  
“Just do your best not to fall,” Maroni says. Then, his hands are at the front of Oswald's pants.  
“Oh. What are-”  
“Shh.”  
He's left untouched for a moment, exposed- and even though there's no one else in the room, he does feel the exposure acutely. The air is cool on his skin. Whatever excitement he experienced before is fading, and he just feels tense and weary. He hears the jingle of metal. What is-  
The first blow of the belt is soft, but the shock makes it seem harder. He coughs out a breath, feels his body shudder.  
“How about that?” Maroni says, idly. Like he's talking about the cream in a cup of coffee.  
“Could you please do that again?” His voice sounds thin to him, like a poor radio signal.  
Maroni chuckles, and hits him again, a bit harder. The pain is syrupy, rich, at first, but after a few moments, all that's left is the edge of irritation, numbing him. Then, another blow comes, reminding his abraded skin to feel. He hears himself make a helpless sound. Another blow comes, and a groan rolls out of him, from deep down, in the place where he feels that peculiar pain.  
“That's it. I don't want to make you bleed.”  
“No,” Oswald moans, feels himself shake.  
“Yes. Do you want to finish up on your own, or do you want some help?”  
“What?” he looks down, “Oh. Please-”  
Then, Maroni's behind him, warm and immovable, his hands are on Oswald, one between his legs, and the other wrapped loosely around his neck. All Oswald has to do is let go, which isn't difficult, because there's nothing left worth holding onto. And, yes, this was what he wanted. To be taken care of and to be punished, at the same time. Anything- to be, if just for a moment, at the mercy of the world, and ruler of it, too.


End file.
